


Requiem on Water

by ntbogoni



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 22:57:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11390163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ntbogoni/pseuds/ntbogoni
Summary: Joan Shepard returns from her mission on Horizon and hurts with Kaidan's rejection.(Placed during ME2)





	Requiem on Water

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Mass Effect Relationship Week (june 2017) and it is something between an one-shot and a drabble.  
> Thanks [Lonyn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lonyn) for helping me with English and some writing tips. If you ever see this, know that you are amazing! ❤️
> 
> __________________________________

 

Joan walked mechanically into the hot cascading water as if there wasn’t a place left in this galaxy for her to be right now. The layers of sweat and filth of the last battle on Horizon still glued to her skin. Slowly and painfully, the boiling water started to fall down her trembling body, carrying the dirt away and leaving a rosy trail in its place.

Heavenly burning sensation. Maybe the only way to soothe the throbbing pain she was feeling in her soul. The doubt and distaste she had seen in Kaidan’s eyes, heard in his voice…it had carved a huge hole in her chest. A bleeding, aching, huge hole.

 _“You’re with Cerberus now,”_ he had said, the contempt plain in his voice _“you betrayed the Alliance, you betrayed me”_.

_…“you betrayed me”…_

His words kept echoing in her mind over and over again. And only when her body began to protest with increasing strong waves of burning ache, she felt the overwhelming pain in her heart give her a blissful rest. For the first time since the raid on that cursed planet, she was able to draw a deep breath, filling her lungs with steaming air. Her heart pounding hard inside her ribcage; the heat driving her senseless.

After what seemed like a million heartbeats, she realized that it wasn’t quite easy to breathe anymore. Heavy lungs and a heavier heart. The soothing heated ache turning into a painless awkward shiver that spread to her limbs and thoughts, no longer able to conceal her pain.

“Loss and fire. I was forged in loss and fire.” she whispered to herself, bitter words not entirely leaving her throat.

She always knew that physical pain had its limits. She knew it before Alchera, when burning lungs turned into nothing while suffocating above the planet. She knew it before Akuze, when the acidic filth had burned her skin for several hours, until it just stopped hurting. She even knew it before Mindoir, a fragile girl with a bruised body and a broken leg, and then numbness. She just knew. Her whole existence had been hurting and forgetting. Solely the way things were in her life.

Her skin had now acquired an alarming reddish tone and her chest was heavy with sorrow. She turned off the shower and moved to the front of the steamy mirror. Placing her hand in the blur that was her reflected face, she removed the tiny drops from the cold surface and stared at her tired blue gaze, where a pair of dark circles outlined her swollen red eyes.

“Hurting and forgetting.” Joan said to herself, low voice not reaching her ears, or her heart, and in a numb spin, she walked out of the bathroom, letting the water droplets create a straight trail towards her bed. She wasn’t the giving up type of woman, but, for today, she just needed a break. She had needed it for a long time.


End file.
